MBRF Global Foods Company S.A. (MBRF3) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Great. Super. It's Jefferies again. I guess, just there are no other questions in the queue. I will take the opportunity to just kind of ask about the investment in Brazil Foods. Obviously, somewhat of a material investment. I get a lot of investor questions on it since it's occurred -- since the announcement. So maybe just to give you the opportunity to provide a bit more color as to why Brazil Foods, why now, and kind of how involved on the operating side you might be going forward?

[Interpreted] This is Marcos. I'll be taking the question. Buying the BRF shares, as we've said, in our announcement was a passive but strategic investment. They are our largest clients but there's a lot we can do together that would be strategic for Marfrig. We bought the shares at what we thought to be very interesting prices. And we will be keeping the same strategic position with BRF. We have no intention at all to buy the rest of the shares. Paying the 40% premium. So we won't be doing that.

Our next question comes from Mr. Carlos Laboy with HSBC.

Yes. Just a natural follow-up from the last question. You won't buy, but would you consider a merger still with BRF? And was that also off the table? The other question I had related to Visipec. There were some questions about the legality of Visipec early on. And it sounds like a lot of those issues and questions have been addressed and answered. Do you see any legal issues with how you are now using Visipec and how Visipec may remain a very viable component to cattle tracing in Brazil.

[Interpreted] I'll answer the question about the merger with the BRF first. These past 2 years, we looked into a merger, but we didn't go through with it. Now that we've bought the shares, and we own 32% of BRF, we thought that would be the best way to invest in the company. So at the moment the merger between the 2 companies is not on the table. Carlos, Visipec has no legal issues at all. It complements the monitoring and tracing system here at Marfrig. It's been implemented, and it's had excellent results. So we're actually enhancing the implementation. It's part of Marfrig's traceability platform. What happened in the past was that Visipec databases were open, and you could have access to all sorts of information. And that's no longer the case. But in terms of legality, there are no legal issues, and we're still using it here at Marfrig.

This concludes today's question-and-answer session, and this concludes Marfrig Global Foods S.A. conference call for today. Thank you very much for your participation, and have a nice day. [Portions of this transcript that are marked [Interpreted] were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]